ABSTRACT
The legitimacy of family policy hinges on whether families are perceived primarily as a personal matter or a proper target for policymaking. The most prominent question faced by policymakers in the 1990s was not whether families needed support, but whether support should be provided by government (Trzcinski, 1995b). Whether families are a proper issue for public policy is not a question that can be answered by science. Instead, it is a political question of values, judgments, and the priorities of the American people. This chapter addresses the legitimacy question in two ways. First, it examines recent political judgments that have been made about the development of policies to support family life. Second, it reviews the results of recent polls examining the values of the American people regarding the role of government in family life.
